Should nurses be forced to do pre-operation care on women having abortions?

The nurses have filed a lawsuit against the University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey, claiming the institution violated the law earlier this fall by announcing that nurses would have to help with abortion patients before and after the procedure, The Washington Post reports.

The Globe asks “Up to what point should health-care workers be allowed to refuse involvement?”

I’d say they should be allowed to refuse all involvement at every stage. Prepping a woman for an abortion or doing post-op care simply frees up others to do the actual abortions. It’s a bit like giving money to Planned Parenthood and saying it’s not going to the side of the organization that does abortions, ie, not possible.

Comments

I read a number of comments to the Globe and Mail article and as far as I read they think the nurses should just go somewhere else or be fired because they don’t want to ‘care for the patient’. However, these commentators don’t seem to realize that they think that abortion is fine and consequently see the issue as one of nurses being arbitrary. On another hand, if the ‘patients’ were being prepared for, let’s say, the gas chamber, I would think the same commentators would say everyone should not help that in any way and anyone who actually opposed the procedure should be applauded. What’s the difference? In thinking about abortion there is no notice that a life is being taken.

Last year, a nurse from the IWK Childrens Hospital told me that she and others were being compelled to care for women who were there for abortions. The IWK does second trimester abortions, only they call them early inductions, result is still a baby that dies. This nurse was looking for another job, but where can she get one. For 20 years, she has worked as a neo-natal nurse and there are no places to do that other than the IWK. So the administration has these nurses over a barrel – refuse to cooperate and you lose your job. What is needed is a whistle-blower to bring this situation out into the open. The general public would be shocked to know that abortions are done at the Children`s Hospital, which they support generously with their telethon donations.

As a nursing student, due to enter the workforce in a few months, this hits home. I think that pro-life nurses should avoid working on any unit where abortions are taking place; but I don’t know if some hospitals have the unit combined with their pre-natal or post-partum units, I hope not.

I think nurses should be able to refuse to assist with abortions or prep women for them. I would, obviously, quit my job before assisting with an abortion or facilitating one in anyway. At the same time, a woman who has had an abortion and is suffering from complications of it could end up on any surgery floor at a hospital. If I was working on a surgery unit and had such a patient, I don’t think I’d refuse to care for her- of course we know she has made a terrible decision, but that can’t be corrected after the fact- she needs love and compassion, her heart needs to change to one of repentance and perhaps in the interactions of compassionate nursing care, a seed might be planted that would lead her to understand the gravity of her actions.

CB, I too agree that you have to care for someone who is suffering complications from an abortion. This would be like caring for the wounded in war, regardless of which side they are on.

Here in Halifax, the “induced labours” (second-trimester abortions really, only the baby is born alive and left to die) are done on the 7th floor of the IWK. This is the exact same floor where women with pregnancy complications go, this is the pre-natal floor. I have a friend who gave birth to a child with severe disabilities. When they were diagnosed at 20 weeks in utero, she was advised to abort. She did not. Last year, her little girl was in for spinal surgery (having rods inserted to help her grow straight) and her room was directly across from the room where she was advised abortion. Her mother could look out the window, across the roof and there 40 feet away was the room where death was advised. She is in the hospital twice a week at least with tests, physiotherapy for her daughter and she knows that she and Victoria are walking testimonies to the choice for life. Some doctors seem quite uncomfortable with this.

Here in Norway you can choose not to help during an abortion, not pre or post. And if too many refuse to do abortions, pro-lifers are refused job at the women’s health ward. Had i been a nurse, I would refuse to help at least pre-abortion, after the fact the baby is already dead… But I work at the psych ward